


it's alright, don't you let it inside

by areunasty



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, ED thoughts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Trans Newton Geiszler, Violent Thoughts, alternate title: don't leave newt alone to dwell!, ish, tiny bit of smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 01:51:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6733150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/areunasty/pseuds/areunasty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re taking Gipsy Danger out for a trial run, and Newt watches with mild interest as the mech slices cleanly through the ocean. He thinks that if he was that big anything would be easy. Loving someone difficult, being loved, the quiet and painful twist of Hermann’s mouth whenever he looks at Newt recently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's alright, don't you let it inside

**Author's Note:**

> seriously, a trigger warning for disordered eating/ED thoughts and practises, self harm mention and near-graphic description of a fantasy of self-surgery. broad warning for gore (body horror would be more apt maybe) and past suicide mention/ideation. 
> 
> i promise this fic isn't as Much as it sounds but stay safe it's very much vent fic so

Newt loses an hour on Wednesday, staring into the Kajiu guts in front of him and wondering how different he’d look all opened up and splayed on a lab table. Hermann brings him a sandwich, almond butter and fake ham. He ‘accidentally’ gets Blue on it, and jokes that fake ham isn’t kosher anyway.

Hermann eyes him over his computer, and Newt loses an entire day a little while after that. He doesn’t come to the lab for a week after, and ignores when Hermann comes tapping on his door. He learns to keep time by it, as Hermann always swings by after dinner with whatever monstrosity the mess has produced that could be considered vegan. He’d taken up veganism in college when he realised that if he wanted to pass, _really pass_ , he had to drop a couple jean sizes. It meant that the hot vegan girls would offer to cook him dinner, and that he could quietly remove entire food groups without too much suspicion.

He’d go home and his father and uncle would ply him with kugel, potato latkes, chocolate rugelach, kibbah, deli sandwiches. Newt never learnt how to say no. He’d go back to MIT feeling greasy and dirty and would scrub at himself under the shower, work long nights in the lab supplemented by coffee and fumes to make himself feel clean again. There was nothing like the pride of an empty stomach.

And, Newt isn’t a stupid guy. He knows what he’s doing, and it scares him in some far off corner in his mind. But he’s got wide hips and a slow metabolism and a penchant for oily food that could be cooked in 30 seconds with a microwave. The meals from the mess were laughable, and he didn’t know what went into them, he hadn’t cooked them himself, so he ate microwave noodles and nothing.

He doesn’t know what he did with the day he lost, but his thighs hurt so he knows at least he didn’t ruin any of his ink. Small mercies were all one needed in wartime.

He gives Hermann a chipper wave the day he finally comes back into the lab. Cranks the shitty portable radio as high as it goes and warbles along to some pop song he remembers from when he was a kid. It’s Sunday and he hasn’t eaten since Friday, he’s feeling good. The box of cigarettes crushed against his stinging thigh by his (too tight, always too tight) jeans is comforting. Hermann’s suspicious glare across the room is comforting. He imagines the smell of formaldehyde from the Kajiu liver in front of him is cleansing him from the inside out.

He rubs at his cock that night and comes thinking about squirting all over Hermann’s proud fucking face. He loves him so much he thinks he could cry, but could never let anyone touch his mess of a body. He runs his fingers over the raised lines on his thighs and he loves it.

\-------

He wants to snap all his teeth out. He wants to dig into his arm and find what they put there. He wants to open himself up and see if he’s as awful from the inside as he is outside. He wants to take himself in, slick and red, hot and pulsing, and try and find the source of all the bad. He wants to slice away yellow fat from his stomach, his arms, his thighs and the creases below his chin. He wants to cry into the ruin of his chest and he hopes it stings.

He wants to hold Hermann close and kiss his eyelids and watch his chest rise and fall while he sleeps. He wants to be able to be the person Hermann deserves. He wants to love long and lasting, deep and sure. He wants to build a better person of himself between the arcs of Hermann’s (perfect) ribcage and below the (perfect) sweep of his collarbones. He wants to kiss Hermann’s mouth, the hollow of his throat, his navel, his scarred thigh, his cock.

Four steps up to the roof and he’s pushing the brick in the doorway to keep it open, lighting a smoke and battling against the wind. By habit, he doesn’t smoke. He’s a biologist, man, he knows what that shit does. However, Hermann had grabbed his wrist right above suicide attempt number three earlier, and he needed a break.

“Newton.” He had said, sounding so off that Newt couldn’t even pin the emotion. His mouth is twisted to the side and Newt had thought, oh.

There was red mixed with the blue and Hermann’s hand was closed around long healed scars and Newt wondered if he could feel them, wondered if he knows, whether he’s always knew, he wondered-

They’re taking Gipsy Danger out for a trial run, and Newt watches with mild interest as the mech slices cleanly through the ocean. He thinks that if he was that big anything would be easy. Loving someone difficult, being loved, the quiet and painful twist of Hermann’s mouth whenever he looks at Newt recently. Hermann is a guy who worries too much about other people and not himself, and Newt doesn’t really appreciate it. They haven’t been arguing recently, and Newt needs that fire back if he needs to exist.

Back in the lab it’s chilly, and Hermann’s wrapped up in his parka like it can keep him away from the world. He half turns when Newt walks past him, likely trailing the smell of smoke and the sea in equal parts. They don’t speak, but Newt draws an incredibly anatomically correct penis on Hermann’s chalkboard hours later, and that cracks an argument from him. 

The week has been a dissociated jump from one event to another, so when Newt finds himself leaning into Hermann when the Shatterdome has gone quiet and dark around them, he tries not to be surprised. Hermann kisses him like Newt is something soft and precious, circles his big hands around Newt’s wrists and brings them to his own jaw. It’s sharp under Newt’s hands, but for once he isn’t poisonous-jealous, not with Hermann making small noises into his mouth like a pleased kitten.

His thumb brushes along suicide attempt number three, and Newt has to suppress a full-body recoil at the sensation, the memories it brings roiling forward like a venomous dust cloud.

“Stop.” Newt gasps, and Hermann drops his hands like he’s been burnt, his face almost comically sorry as he realises what he’d been feeling. “Don’t.” Is all Newt can breathe, and his wrists are _itching_ and he can feel his stomach practically bulging over the waistband of his jeans. He feels stupid and ugly. 

Hermann’s eyes soften, not as soft as pity, just hard/soft enough that Newt lets himself be fussed into nightclothes, into bed, into Hermann’s arms. 

His hand strokes through Newt’s hair, a long steady press from crown to top of spine. Newt melts under the touch and tucks his knees up so Hermann doesn’t touch the parts of him that he’s never shown a single soul.

“I never knew.” Hermann murmurs, breath hot against Newt’s forehead, stirring his hair. The words unwind him, and he tips his head against the jut of Hermann’s (perfect) collarbones.

“I never wanted you to.” Because he is Newton fucking Geiszler, and he is not weak.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u for reading + love u
> 
> title from honest by three man cannon


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